‘Speed up migration to Universal Credit’

Wyre Council needs to ‘speed up’ the process of transferring benefit claimants over to the new Universal Credit system, the head of its contact centre Peter Mason has warned.

He said in a report to councillors some 725 claims were processed up to October 31, with 170 migrated to the new system, which pays a single monthly payment and replaces Jobseeker’s Allowance and other benefts.

He said: “Given the current caseload is 7,400 claims, and new claims are received every day, the migration will need to speed up substantially if it is to be completed by 2021.”